Stalin's obsession with the missing gold of Tsar Nicholas II has finally found meaning. Russia stands at the brink of war with the mighty German army. It is broke, barely able to feed its people, much less fight a war against an enemy bent on its destruction. Stalin must find that gold, and so when a rumor comes out of the Gulag, and it proves to have credible elements, Stalin leaps into action.

In April, 1945, British Intelligence orders one of its last agents in Berlin to obtain the plans for a German "miracle weapon." Then, desperate to get the agent out before the fall of the city, British Special Operations asks the Kremlin for help. And they ask for one man in particular: Inspector Pekkala.

The German Army begins to shatter before the advancing Soviet forces in 1944. Two Russian soldiers burrow into the crypt of a German church, where, clutched in the hands of a priest's skeleton, they discover a priceless icon last seen in the grasp of Rasputin, the mad monk who mesmerized the Romanovs. When news of the discovery reaches Moscow, Stalin calls upon his most trusted investigator, Inspector Pekkala, to unravel the secret of the icon's past....